Naw, with the light pollution in the area you just can't get the Milky Way to show up any brighter than that. I'm definitely looking forward to my trip to Wyoming in a few weeks to get away from the city lights!

Thanks for the reminder jrista. My brain is getting ever more forgetful. I just divided up the time by my card size and was going to go with that. Guess its just as well that it clouded up, saved me a lot of time sorting photos in frustration.

Here is a better reminder:

The end of the year is a really good time for meteor showers...Draconids, Leonids, Orionids, and Geminids. All in the span of less than three months. I just hope the sky is clear for all four of them. I didn't get any good shots of the Leonids and Orionids last year...I hadn't yet figured out the whole "time on pixels" factor (or the meteors that I was able to see were just too dim...a nice big fireball would show up brightly even on a 30 second exposure.) The Geminids were the first shower that I got some good shots of. I really want to apply the technique this year (and hopefully with a 5D III) to all four showers.

Excellent shot. It looks like you might have actually gotten some meteors from different showers. I can see a bunch coming from the same radiant, and there are a couple others that seem to streak cross-wise to that radiant. Wonder which storm those were from...

Light pollution is such a pain. I headed out about 35 minutes from down, well south of the Denver area, for the Geminids last year. I am thinking I might need to drive more like an hour to get to darker territory this year.

Naw, with the light pollution in the area you just can't get the Milky Way to show up any brighter than that. I'm definitely looking forward to my trip to Wyoming in a few weeks to get away from the city lights!

I can sympathize with light pollution myself. You did an admirable job with it!

Here's one of the shots from Saturday night/Sunday morning, up in Yosemite; please don't be too harsh, it was my first time trying this kind of thing. I think some of the warmer colors & haze on the horizon were due to some local fires. I used a lot higher ISO because I was shooting for timelapse video and wanted the milky way moving in it. Shot this in tungsten after reading that somewhere on the net, but now I wonder if it's too blue. Unfortunately, there were some really good streaking meteors leaving glowing trails that were overhead or otherwise not in front of my lens, even though this was 14mm.

Here's one of the shots from Saturday night/Sunday morning, up in Yosemite; please don't be too harsh, it was my first time trying this kind of thing. I think some of the warmer colors & haze on the horizon were due to some local fires. I used a lot higher ISO because I was shooting for timelapse video and wanted the milky way moving in it. Shot this in tungsten after reading that somewhere on the net, but now I wonder if it's too blue. Unfortunately, there were some really good streaking meteors leaving glowing trails that were overhead or otherwise not in front of my lens, even though this was 14mm.

Great shot! Looks like you had some nice, dark skies. I would say 14mm is a great focal length for wide field night sky photography.

Here's one of the shots from Saturday night/Sunday morning, up in Yosemite; please don't be too harsh, it was my first time trying this kind of thing. I think some of the warmer colors & haze on the horizon were due to some local fires. I used a lot higher ISO because I was shooting for timelapse video and wanted the milky way moving in it. Shot this in tungsten after reading that somewhere on the net, but now I wonder if it's too blue. Unfortunately, there were some really good streaking meteors leaving glowing trails that were overhead or otherwise not in front of my lens, even though this was 14mm.

At the risk of being criticized by the landscape photo police, you should have tried turning the camera sideways...since you are saying you missed some meteors overhead.

The color temperature of your Milky Way indeed is far too cool, but since it was intentional, I suppose it's a valid take on it. I've seen this look before. It's quite a nice shot...certainly the blue hue is appealing and draws one into the image. Of course if it's shot in RAW you can tweak on the color temperature however you wish later on.

If you are saying this was your first night sky shot...like ever...WOW that's quite a good result, no doubts about that!! You're on your way. I envy your Yosemite visit. It is a very highly traffic'ed park, though. For good reason, of course.

Granted, this was over the course a few hours, but they were all from the same night. This was the first time I've seen or had a chance to shoot any meteors-- are they normally roughly in the same direction? I was a bit surprised with how scattered some of them seemed.

Excellent shot. It looks like you might have actually gotten some meteors from different showers. I can see a bunch coming from the same radiant, and there are a couple others that seem to streak cross-wise to that radiant. Wonder which storm those were from...

Light pollution is such a pain. I headed out about 35 minutes from down, well south of the Denver area, for the Geminids last year. I am thinking I might need to drive more like an hour to get to darker territory this year.

Granted, this was over the course a few hours, but they were all from the same night. This was the first time I've seen or had a chance to shoot any meteors-- are they normally roughly in the same direction? I was a bit surprised with how scattered some of them seemed.

Excellent shot. It looks like you might have actually gotten some meteors from different showers. I can see a bunch coming from the same radiant, and there are a couple others that seem to streak cross-wise to that radiant. Wonder which storm those were from...

Light pollution is such a pain. I headed out about 35 minutes from down, well south of the Denver area, for the Geminids last year. I am thinking I might need to drive more like an hour to get to darker territory this year.

The earth rotates 15 degrees every hour so how many hours were you out? About 3 or so I am guessing looking at the variation in the angle of the streaks...

Granted, this was over the course a few hours, but they were all from the same night. This was the first time I've seen or had a chance to shoot any meteors-- are they normally roughly in the same direction? I was a bit surprised with how scattered some of them seemed.

Excellent shot. It looks like you might have actually gotten some meteors from different showers. I can see a bunch coming from the same radiant, and there are a couple others that seem to streak cross-wise to that radiant. Wonder which storm those were from...

Light pollution is such a pain. I headed out about 35 minutes from down, well south of the Denver area, for the Geminids last year. I am thinking I might need to drive more like an hour to get to darker territory this year.

Meteors in a given shower all radiate from the same point in the sky...called the "radiant". The Perseids are so named because their radiant is in the constellation Perseus. Most radiants are named after constellations, stars, star clusters, etc. If you point your camera at the radiant, then you usually get meteors streaking out from that point. Point the camera some other direction, and meteors will either streak across or streak down. Any other meteors that seem to come from elsewhere would be isolated ones, or possibly from another concurrent shower (which actually happens, particularly in August, however most other showers besides the big four, Perseids, Leonids, Orionids, Geminids, usually have very low ZHR, or Zenithal Hourly Rate...the number of meteors per hour.)

The earth rotates 15 degrees every hour so how many hours were you out? About 3 or so I am guessing looking at the variation in the angle of the streaks...

I like the picture

Thanks! And good guess, I think the pictures spanned from roughly 10:30 to about 1 AM or so. It was quite the show

The monsoon season (English for mausam {used both in Hindi and Urdu} - Seasons or probably a better translation is weather...) here in India - so clouds and rain! Well, I'd prefer rain to a shower of comet tail...

Great shot! Looks like you had some nice, dark skies. I would say 14mm is a great focal length for wide field night sky photography.

Thank you! Yes we did, no moon, far from major light sources I must admit, I did try to play with contrast, black etc. to try to emphasize the meteors. I didn't know about the meteor-to-star light ratio you mentioned earlier, so I was simply shooting in 25-30 second bursts. Next time I'll change it up!

At the risk of being criticized by the landscape photo police, you should have tried turning the camera sideways...since you are saying you missed some meteors overhead.

The color temperature of your Milky Way indeed is far too cool, but since it was intentional, I suppose it's a valid take on it. I've seen this look before. It's quite a nice shot...certainly the blue hue is appealing and draws one into the image. Of course if it's shot in RAW you can tweak on the color temperature however you wish later on.

If you are saying this was your first night sky shot...like ever...WOW that's quite a good result, no doubts about that!! You're on your way. I envy your Yosemite visit. It is a very highly traffic'ed park, though. For good reason, of course.

I had considered that, but to be more specific, the best ones we missed were all over; far to the left, right, so far overhead they were almost behind me, etc., so I left it. Plus I was shooting for timelapse, which I'll try to add shortly. What I did do is stop shooting at one point, and angle my camera much higher.

And yes, I think the blue helps emphasize the stars/meteors, although I suppose some may disagree. I also prefer a bluer look than a warmer one; I wonder if people that prefer a warmer is partly because they're used to being closer to light pollution? And I did shoot in RAW, so I can tweak this repeatedly. Which I'll probably do, because I know I could edit the shots better than I did.

Thank you! I mainly shoot landscape and am used to some techniques which help (mirror lock up, on a tripod, shutter release, manual focus etc), plus I have shot at night before; some steel wool, light painting, catching streaks of car lights, stuff like that. But this was my first time trying to milky way & meteor shots. It's kind of silly that it is, since I have regular access to Yosemite (I can reach the entrance in about an hour), and I've been to places like Arches & Zion. I'll definitely try to do more night photography in the future & get better at it.